The invention is a booster chair for comfortably supporting young children in a movie theater having seats designed to support adults and biased to fold upward and inward with spring pressure when not in use.
The prior art is replete with child booster and safety seats for nearly all applications where a child is required to sit in seats designed for adults. Many inventions are concerned with automobiles and aircraft where proper seating is a safety concern. Examples of this application include U.S. Pat. No. 5,332,285 issued to Sinnhuber on Jul. 26, 1994 presenting a vehicle safety seat attaching to the vehicle seat and head rest. U.S. Pat. No. 5,286,086 issued to Gunji on Feb. 15, 1994 further teaches an auxiliary child seat for a vehicle with connections for the vehicle seat belts. Other child seats are taught for ordinary chairs such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,968 to Sheridan et al. issued Aug. 9, 1994, describing an inflatable unit, and for barber chairs such as U.S. Pat. No. 1,247,161.
Although this is a crowed art field, the area of child seating in stadiums and movie theaters is under-represented. One reference teaches a combination stadium seat and article carrier that is similar to a saddle bag with a cushioned flap to soften the hard bench type stadium seat. See, U.S. Pat. No. 2,865,433 issued Dec. 23, 1958 to Warner. Another reference teaches a bench type booster seat for suspension above the arm rests in a movie theater. As discussed in this U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,980 to Young issued Apr. 19, 1994, the current standard movie theater has seats with a depth designed for a normal sized adult and does not provide seats sized for children. Children using these adult seats often stand in them to gain enough height to see over the people seated in front of them.
Further taught in the above reference to Young is that standing in the adult seat by the child presents two problems. The first is that most adult theater seats are designed with a bias to spring the chair up and inward when the chair is not in use. Having a child standing in a chair that is biased upward and inward is unsafe because, for smaller children who lack the resistance to maintain the adult theater seat downward, the seat biases upward, possibly bending the child's legs and thus creating an uncomfortable viewing environment. The second problem that is created by a child standing in the theater seat is that the standing child is then generally taller than seated adult and hence restricts the viewing of the movie by theater patrons seated behind the child.
The last referenced patent above provides added height for the child by teaching a bench seat suspended across the arm rests of a movie seat. The bench is a solid planar surface that becomes uncomfortable for the child especially when considering the child must sit on the bench for extended periods of time to watch a complete movie. Another problem with the bench suspension seats is that the child's feet are free to constantly engage the spring biased movie theater seat creating noise as the spring seat is partially depressed and then released.
A bench seat is also difficult to carry to the theater especially with a child and the requisite drinks, pop corn, and sundry other items mothers take into a theater with their children.